Members of the United Nation's International Telecommunications Union (ITU) have agreed to work towards implementing a standard for the Internet that would allow for eavesdropping on a worldwide scale.

At a conference in Dubai this week, the ITU members decided to adopt the Y.2770 standard for deep packet inspection, a top-secret proposal by way of China that will allow telecom companies across the world to more easily dig through data passed across the Web.

According to the UN, implementing deep-packet inspection, or DPI, on such a global scale will allow authorities to more easily detect the transferring and sharing of copyrighted materials and other protected files by finding a way for administrators to analyze the payload of online transmissions, not just the header data that is normally identified and interpreted.

"It is standard procedure to route packets based on their headers, after all it is the part of the packet that contains information on the packet's intended destination," writes The Inquirer's Lawrence Lati, "but by inspecting the contents of each packet ISPs, governments and anyone else can look at sensitive data. While users can mitigate risks by encrypting data, given enough resources encryption can be foiled."

Iran has obtained data from a U.S. intelligence drone that shows it was spying on the country's military sites and oil terminals, Iranian media reported its armed forces as saying Wednesday.

The Islamic Republic announced Tuesday that it had captured a ScanEagle drone belonging to the United States, but Washington said there was no evidence to support the assertion.

"Its capture is not an issue the Americans can easily refute," Iran's Revolutionary Guards spokesman Brigadier General Ramezan Sharif was quoted as saying Wednesday.

"I advise the American commanders to recount their drones accurately," he said.

The incident has underscored tensions in the Gulf as Iran and the U.S. draw attention to their military capabilities in the vital oil exporting region in a standoff over Iran's nuclear program.

"We have fully extracted the drone's information," the Revolutionary Guard said in a statement Wednesday, according to Iran's English-language Press TV.

Ottawa - Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird says Israel's plan to build new settlements on territory claimed by the Palestinians is not helping the cause of peace in the Middle East.

Baird was making his first public statement in the House of Commons on the controversial move by the Israelis, which was meant as retaliation after the Palestinians won greater recognition at the United Nations last week.

The Israeli settlement announcement sparked international condemnation from all of Canada's allies, including the United States, which voted against the Palestinian motion at the UN.

The Harper government has been criticized for staying virtually silent on the Israeli move, beyond a generic statement that unilateral moves by either side were not good for the prospects of peace.

Baird reiterated the government's heavy criticism of the Palestinian statehood bid during question period when he was asked about the settlements by the Bloc Quebecois.

But he emphasized that neither the UN vote nor the settlement announcement is helpful.

On Tuesday, the Harper government pledged to preserve hundreds of millions of dollars in Canadian humanitarian aid to the Palestinians.

In October, the US launched an airstrike in Afghanistan that killed three children - ages 8, 10, and 12 -while they were gathering firewood (or by some accounts, dung to burn as fuel). NATO issued its usual dismissive statement, admitting it may have "accidentally killed three innocent Afghan civilians."

But now, according to the Military Times, the US military includes children on their list of who they're allowed to murder with impunity.

...a Marine official here raised questions about whether the children were "innocent." Before calling for the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System mission in mid-October, Marines observed the children digging a hole in a dirt road in Nawa district, the official said, and the Taliban may have recruited the children to carry out the mission.

So digging holes in Afghanistan is now grounds for getting bombed? The children's relatives and local tribal elders had confirmed at the time that they were not Taliban recruits and were not planting any roadside bombs.

Cairo - Supporters and opponents of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi battled late Wednesday in Cairo with rocks and firebombs, as three key presidential advisors quit to protest the president's handling of the country's constitutional crisis.

Reporting from the scene, VOA correspondent Elizabeth Arrott said the new violence erupted when Morsi's Islamist supporters attacked demonstrators protesting what they describe as a presidential power grab.

"I've seen Molotov cocktails, people armed with iron bars and rocks, some people even pulling branches off of trees in terms of trying to find some kind of weapon to fight with, the crowds pushing back and forth and there are reports of live ammunition being used and again, unconfirmed reports of casualties, of fatalities among the people who are fighting," she said.

Arrott said most of the presidential supporters are men with beards typical of members of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, while opponents of the president appeared younger and had some women present.

As clashes continued late Wednesday, there were reports of Muslim Brotherhood supporters attacking journalists outside the presidential palace. Separately, three more presidential advisors announced their resignations to protest the decrees granting Mr. Morsi expanded powers. Five of the president's 17 advisors have quit since November 22.

Opposition protesters want Morsi to abolish a decree he issued last month granting himself sweeping powers that place him above review by the judiciary. Many also oppose a new draft constitution drawn up by a mainly Islamist committee. The draft is set for a December 15 referendum.

Israel has rebuffed a UN call to adhere to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and open itself to international inspectors, calling the suggestion a "meaningless mechanical vote" of a body that "lost all its credibility regarding Israel."

­In a 174-6 vote, the United Nations General Assembly demanded in a non-binding call that Tel Aviv join the NPT "without further delay," in an effort to create a legally binding nuclear-free Middle East.

Washington, Israel's strongest ally, surprised no one by voting against the resolution - but did approve two paragraphs that were voted on separately, which called for universal adherence to the NPT and for all non-signatory governments to join.

The UN body "has lost all its credibility regarding Israel with these types of routine votes that are ensured passage by an automatic majority and which single out Israel," Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor was quoted by Jerusalem Post as saying.

When financial markets in the United States crash, so does the U.S. economy. Just remember what happened back in 2008. The financial markets crashed, the credit markets froze up, and suddenly the economy went into cardiac arrest. Well, there are very few things that could cause the financial markets to crash harder or farther than a derivatives panic.

Sadly, most Americans don't even understand what derivatives are. Unlike stocks and bonds, a derivative is not an investment in anything real. Rather, a derivative is a legal bet on the future value or performance of something else. Just like you can go to Las Vegas and bet on who will win the football games this weekend, bankers on Wall Street make trillions of dollars of bets about how interest rates will perform in the future and about what credit instruments are likely to default.

Wall Street has been transformed into a gigantic casino where people are betting on just about anything that you can imagine. This works fine as long as there are not any wild swings in the economy and risk is managed with strict discipline, but as we have seen, there have been times when derivatives have caused massive problems in recent years. For example, do you know why the largest insurance company in the world, AIG, crashed back in 2008 and required a government bailout?

It was because of derivatives. Bad derivatives trades also caused the failure of MF Global, and the 6 billion dollar loss that JPMorgan Chase recently suffered because of derivatives made headlines all over the globe. But all of those incidents were just warm up acts for the coming derivatives panic that will destroy global financial markets. The largest casino in the history of the world is going to go "bust" and the economic fallout from the financial crash that will happen as a result will be absolutely horrific.

There is a reason why Warren Buffett once referred to derivatives as "financial weapons of mass destruction". Nobody really knows the total value of all the derivatives that are floating around out there, but estimates place the notional value of the global derivatives market anywhere from 600 trillion dollars all the way up to 1.5 quadrillion dollars.

Keep in mind that global GDP is somewhere around 70 trillion dollars for an entire year. So we are talking about an amount of money that is absolutely mind blowing.

So who is buying and selling all of these derivatives?

Time for every one to sober up and come down from their highs. I do not want to throw cold water on the UN vote last week, nor do I want to dismiss the good will of the majority of the world that voted for "Palestine" as an observer state. However time for the Palestinians under Jewish Occupation and in the Diaspora to take a second look at 45 years of a failing national project and a failing leadership and make a difference for the future.

Every Palestinian should remember, Mahmoud Abbas who returned to Ramallah to a hero's welcome after the UN vote is the same man who with Yasser Arafat and Ahmed Qurai negotiated and signed the Oslo Accord, which legally and permanently perpetuate the Jewish Occupation and created a management company (Palestinian National Authority) to manage the Jewish Occupation.

Arafat and the PA corruption and incompetence and the security cooperation with Israel were the main cause for factional divisions between Fatah and Hamas with the PLO/Fatah aborting the first transparent and democratic election under Jewish Occupation.

Fresh on the heels of the fallout from revelations regarding former BBC entertainer Jimmy Savile and his unbelievably sickening and innumerable instances of child molestation as well as the "look the other way" approach taken by the BBC, more and more questions are now emerging in regards to the connection between Savile and British Royalty, most notably Prince Charles.

At least, more questions should be emerging.

Unfortunately, however, the British mainstream media is deeming Prince Charles and the rest of his ilk in positions of power and perceived genetic royalty as if they are beyond reproach. This approach is typical and to be expected, yet it is also highly ironic considering the fact that such is the same position the mainstream media took with the allegations against Jimmy Savile for so many years.

As a result of the Savile affair, mainstream outlets, particularly the BBC, now have a lot of egg on their faces in the areas of credibility and respect.In short, any connections placing Prince Charles in an uncompromising position regarding his connections with Savile or his potential for sharing a penchant for unnatural relationships with children is being completely ignored if not officially covered up.

NATO agreed on Tuesday to send Patriot missiles to Turkey to defend against a possible Syrian missile attack and voiced grave concern about reports that Damascus may be preparing to use chemical weapons.

"To the Turkish people we say: We are determined to defend you and your territory. To anyone who would want to attack Turkey we say: Don't even think about it," NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said after the 28-nation alliance foreign ministers took the decision at a meeting in Brussels.

NATO-member Turkey repeatedly has scrambled jets along the countries' joint frontier and responded in kind when shells from the Syrian conflict came down inside its borders, fuelling fears that the civil war could spread to destabilize the region.

It quickly welcomed the move. "This decision is important, as it demonstrates and re-confirms allied solidarity and unity in practical terms," Turkey's Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Germany, the Netherlands and the United States plan to provide Patriot missile batteries, the ministers said, but they gave no details on numbers. Deployment is expected to take several weeks, given the need for approval by national parliaments and the logistics of delivering the missiles.

NATO ministers unanimously expressed "grave concern" about reports that the Syrian government may be prepared to use its chemical weapons, Rasmussen said. He warned earlier that any use of chemical weapons by Syria would prompt an immediate international response.